I’m just “there”, sucking up the air by your said to make you feel less

on the outside.

I’m starving.

When they’ve forgotten the years I’ve littered Earth

You could always mark the time

By the string of men I’ve played and hurt.

They couldn’t be together if they had to be themselves.

I think you love me because I’m the only one left standing.

While your dreams were burning, they fled your shelter. Now I stand in the ashes of your foundation.

Believing in you wholeheartedly. Waiting for our next step. Loving you when you think there is nothing left to love.

It isn’t me you love… there just isn’t anyone else around.

She said to me, “I can’t be with someone who doesn’t believe in God.”

I told her I couldn’t be with someone who didn’t have Faith.

She never felt loved, because she never believed she was worth loving.

I don’t love him. I don’t think I love anyone. But it felt nice to pretend for a night… that I could be one of these “nice” girls… with boyfriends, instagrams and families… Something precious, innocent and sweet. Something worth protecting.

I played my part well; the naive, the blameless, the victim, the pure… I covered my scares in a flowing white dress, I said words of love and affirmation with convincing tamber, as if fore the first time. I tightened as he entered me, telling him, “It’s been so long”, “I never do this” “No one has ever been this big, this good, this ___”.

Meanwhile praying he hadn’t kept count of the Magnums in the drawer, or noticed a golden wrapper catching the moonlight in my trashcan.

I know I’ve been complaining that you don’t clean up enough, but you’re a beauty uncommon. You’ve put all your flaws on display. Highlight them, almost. Your refusal to hide your most authentic self was something perhaps I was too immature to handle or appreciate.

I know you know about them.

The others.

The road trips. The flights (always round-trip, to perpetuate the lies I told myself. Intentions of returning being the best version of myself with only the best version of you). Weekend long infatuations with 2 and 3 syllable names that offered me only surface-level sparkle and charm. Hiding their worst selves behind tracks, carefully-kept and defined borders; sharp angles. Municipalities, highways, industrial districts….city outskirts I avoided while getting lost upskirts.

But you always welcomed me home with open arms. Carried me home in the early morning hours when tequila and self loathing hand drowned my wit, taken my charm. You brought nourishment straight to my front door when I was ill, or sick of trying.

You never stopped your effort in uplifting or inspiring me with your sweet songs, your endless hunger for more. Do you ever stop? Do you ever shut your doors?

You’re great with kids. You’ve always doted on them but never once babied them. You instill a work ethic immediately, a hard work ethic, as chubby legs shuffle and tumble over themselves earnestly to keep apace with your “Manhattan -walk” and grey scale mazes.

I should’ve told you just how beautiful you are every day. Lyingin the warmth of a lazy sun and a half hearted embrace in another weekend “escape” in a nameless, vast, empty… in a place in which no one walks or understands the importance of strong coffee and a good bagel.. I was comforted only temporarily. What was I “escaping” exactly? I longed for you every time. You were always the image in my mind and the name on my tongue. It was your pulse to which my heart kept time.

I was trying to outrun my self disappointment. Out run my apathy, my failures… I blamed you. I shut you out for nights spent glued to Netflix. Self medicating with a cocktail of Xanax and weed, until I pass out in a pile of takeout crumbs, wrapped in the warmth of an oversized gut and whiskey breath.

I love you. I put everything on the line to be with you and then resented you because you were always there. But you never changed. You weren’t the problem. You didn’t let me down. You were always available, always checking in.

You never slept.

There is nothing out there that I can’t find here… with you. You’re who I want to come home to every night. I promise to appreciate you every day. To choose to spend my time in gratitude for all you have and are doing, instead of longing for what isn’t. You’ve loved every part of me without question or hesitation. It’s long overdue that I started doing the same. Being what you deserve.

I love you, New York.

There is a charm to New Yorkers complaining about everything. We choose the grit, the grime, the smells, the attitude. We trade in space, privacy, time, convenience, silence to live in The Greatest City in the World. She isn’t the prettiest, she is tattered and torn, waif like, old, a heavy smoker and a filthy mouth. But she is also sophisticated, worldly, progressive and empathetic. She scolds hard but loves harder. She is stern and impatient. She’s dirty, somewhat unkept. She has expensive taste, draping herself in the finest cloth, yet her ears are turning green from her corner-store “gold” hoops. She refuses to hide her crazy. She will tear you apart and uplift you in a single breath. She is racist, elitist; free loving and a humanitarian. She is colorblind and categorical. She makes me feel incredibly loved and completely worthless. She adores me and neglects me.

A pulsating contradiction.

My city bonds me with the millions living in the concrete embrace as we fight to keep moving, even if it’s just”putzing” around in the shadows of 30-story manifested dreams.

New Yorkers: my brothers and sisters.

To know her is to know survival. To love her is to loathe her… but no one else can make you feel so alive.

Shakiera Sarai

October 9, 2016 at 12:15pm

I love this city. I love all of this city. She carries the weight of a large expectations, the American Dream, the ambitious, the dreamers….

But beneath her cape, she covers the poor, the hungry, the outcast, the struggling, the barely surviving.

I’m watching a documentary on Ed Koch right now. It is important to understand the history of this city. Every side of it. Every side of our celebrated and unsung history, and the history we smear with shame. To love her, is to love every part of her; her plump lips, her shapely hips, to the cellulite on her thighs and the bags beneath her eyes.

Remember when we fell, tumbling, swirling in a twister of young, wild uninhibited love? We couldn’t question it, we didn’t mention it, our hearts were louder than our minds. We could hear the protest of logic against our wild ride.

You and I….

Back when we were “you and I”… attractive, active, fearless and careless.

We were a fucking mess.

Magically, mystically, intertwined and in my mind we were

One.

We trusted. We lusted. We knew everything was okay, everyday. I believed so strongly in you, the things you do. The dreams and things we believed. Wholeheartedly. You and me. We were so magnetic. Energetic. Knetic.

Everyone said. You took my hand and lead. Reassured me. Called me “baby”.

No, we aren’t crazy. Just…. Maybe….

This was it.

Pure. True. Bliss…

What did I miss?

#16

I eat though I am not hungry.

I drink though I am not thirsty.

Maybe because I know I need to fill

All the emptiness inside me.

I take it all on

Fill it to the brim, then cram in more.

Maybe if I shove enough in

I can purge this sickness (sadness) from my core.

I don’t know when it’s enough

I never want to stop

I indulge in you, all of you… addicted to the feeding, unaware of the consequences

We are creatures of habit. In a desperate pursuit of happiness, we deny our faults and label them “the past”, “change”, “growth”, “transformative”. We hold out for “new beginnings”. Are we truly changing? Have we found something real? of depth? This “true” emotion. Did we “just know” that it was “meant to be”? Are we complete now? Is this it? Is the lifetime search for wholeness finished?

Or are we victims of a build up of lactic acid, legs aching from running away?

Tired. Lonely. Horny….Bored.

It feels so easy to rest our burdens and responsibilities on another. In denying that we still have no fucking clue who we are, or how uninspired our own lives have been, we hide behind the façade of meeting someone new, impressing them…. feeding our glutionous egos with the free-flowing compliments that dribble out of the stupefied victim falling in love with us. A new beginning. “Like” me. Love me. Like a living, breathing Facebook page, I’ll only show you my best angles. Everything goes through my artfully sifted filter, designed to constantly impress and intrigue you. You’ll never know the truth; who I was before. Living for the approval of others. Un able to walk without holding a hand. Unable to live, to adventure, to invent without another. Unable to think without someone ele’s opinion being fed into my ear… non-organic inspiration. A people-pleasure. I’m in the business of making everyone around me happy, saying exactly what they want to hear into their fat heads.

No one knows. No one sees. So happy to be surrounded by self-assurance they don’t even notice that I’m not tangible. An apparition. Translucent. Reflective. Showing them how wonderful and worshipped they are… by me.

Giving them so much, there’s nothing left of me, for me. I don’t know how to just be. Desperate to find another to interact with me. Another to confirm my existence. I don’t know what to think of me without the approval of others. “Tell me what I am”.

#3.5

…..being far more cool and interesting than we ever were alone at home, watching Netflix in our underwear and half-heartedly masturbating while over indulging on foods with absolutely no nutritional value.

#4 – 1/9/16

God, She looked like shit.

There isn’t a better way to put it. This was the girl I remember winning me over with her incredibly tight frame, radiant charm, crystal-blue eyes and soft, plump pout. All eyes always on her. I just wanted to take her hand and drag her to everyone I knew. “Look how beautiful! Can you believe it?! She’s just as crazy about me!”

Late nights smiling uncontrollably just at the memory of her. A reminder of her scent flooded my body with what can only be described as divinity. I clung to her late in the night, refusing to let her go. Hanging on as long as I could. Her angelic face buried deep inot my chest. I was soothed to sleep by he soft purr of her slumber, as her light breath tickled my torso. “It’s so easy”, I thought… I was constantly clown away by her beauty. Waiting to wake up.

I was jolted awake.

Here she was, now, crystal blue eyes looking dull and lifeless, surrounded by a glossy mix of yellow and bloodshot red. A shaky foundation of deep, dark black and purple fought against the lower lids and allowed what little there was of her remaining to peer through. I couldn’t shake the feeling that she wanted to shut out all of the light.

Her once lushes lips were thin, crusted over form lack of use, of hydration. They atrophied into a downward slope of dissatisfaction, fatigue and defeat. Her sweet milk completion had no faded into a malnourished pale , she could almost disappear into the gray winter cityscape, if it weren’t for the various red, dry and aching scabs littered around my former source of inspiration. The only proof of life in this decaying sight.

She had let herself go… that’s an understatement. Parts of her poked and prodded and tested the threading of her abused, dingy and wrinkled outfit. She spilled out of the top of her jeans, evidence that her shirt failed to disguise as she struggled to keep it below her navel. It fought with her as she violently pulled and tugged at it throughout the night.

Her hair reflected the street light like an oil spill, with small reminders of blonde throughout the long, hardened, neglected mess. It looked wet.

It felt unnecessary to force pleasantries. No one had the energy to deny the wrecked, soiled remnants of a battlefield standing before me. All I could manage to mutter was,

“You made it.”-

January 2016

#5

Why is it “endearing” and “charming” when the inspiration of pop songs are girls who drink coffee late, eat chocolate in the morning, spend all day in bed, take off their heels and refuse to mask their faults… but when I do it, it’s unhealthy, reckless, irresponsible, self-destructive and undesirable?

#7

I’m an overachiever. I enrolled in the advanced courses of Life. I like to study difficult Life lessons and learn them the HARD way.

#6

Dear God, I think I’ve lost him. I felt him leave me. I felt the love and light torn out of me.

I want to give him his space, but I know that’s all he needs to see a life without me… that’s all he needs to see; that he never needed me at all.

#9

She laughed until she cried. She felt both the release and immense anguish upon the realization that she had no idea what the fuck she wanted… no idea what she was doing. She had no idea who she was.

March 2016

#25

I’m itching for an affair… the rush of new infatuation through my veins. Thoughtlessness. Numbness. All pleasure all the time. Lust. My drug of choice.